Arne Nøst

The Artist
Arne Nøst is a trained visual artist from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art and the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. As a visual artist, he works in various genres: sculpture, drawing, painting, installations, video, and sound. Arne has also worked as a scenographer and director on numerous theatre productions and has been the theatre director at Rogaland Theatre (2009-2018) and at Riksteatret, Norway’s National Theatre (2020-2025). In addition to his many exhibitions and public art decorations, Arne has been an illustrator for the newspapers Dagbladet and Aftenposten.

About the Art
No one who lived in the 1800s is alive today. But they were there, just like us, in different situations and with different experiences. The only things left from them are all these items they surrounded themselves with — the things we today call "historical objects."

By projecting live images onto the objects — images of people, nature, mechanical structures, weather, and wind — Arne aims to create a connection between the audience and the life that surrounded the objects when they were new and functional in their own time.

Arne also wants to create a space that comments on technological development, class, and gender differences. The people of the 1800s faced the world with different premises than we do: during this century the steam engine, gaslighting, the telephone, the telegraph, and electricity all arrived. At the same time, people were just like us, driven by various emotions, ideas, and needs. The people of 19th-century Stavanger had to endure great upheavals. As we do today.